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Joshua Weiss is a Product Lead at Specno - who help businesses solve a variety of problems. Josh is also an avid gamer, and we chat about not only bridging the gap between the work you do and the things in life you enjoy doing, but also how valuable any type of job skills are and being able to transfer skills into your new role. Josh’s story into where he currently finds himself in life is an inte...

In this engaging episode, we sit down with Abby Covert, a renowned Author, Information Architect, and community organizer. Abby's expertise in Information Architecture (IA) has been transforming how we organize information, making it accessible to everyone. Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of IA and discover how sensemaking can be applied to our personal lives. Explore the profou...

In our final instalment of our Jack Studio trilogy series, we round out our time with the studio by chatting to Dylan da Silva and Claudia Ferreira, the UI and system design specialists. We explore how they work together and compliment each others skillset, similarly to Claire and Paul. One thing we’ve definitely learnt form these episodes is how highly functioning small design studio teams can be...

On this second episode of the Jack Studio series, we are joined by Claire Keet (Creative Director) and Paul Loots (Director of Operations). We continue on from our previous conversation with their CEO Sabeeha and delve more into working with clients and how the Studio managers projects in such a small team of people. Claire and Paul also each walk us through one of their favourite past projects an...

Sabeeha Banubhai is our first ever returning guest, and we were so elated to talk to her once again. She is our first interview in a series of episodes with the team from Jack Studios, where Sabeeha is the founder and CEO. We spoke to Sabeeha about some of the ins and outs of running a design studio, from choosing clients and delegating a pipeline and tasks, to Alfi’s experience workshopping with...

Adrian Owen is a fine artist and illustrator whose body of work speaks for itself. We had a very interesting conversation with him about marketing yourself and he provided some insight into his experience as a freelance creative. We explore the creative inclinations that arguably exist in everyone - wether it be inherit or something that’s developed through  practise. We also discuss the value of...

Jan Oberholzer is a freelance animator and illustrator. In this episode we once again dive into the world of freelancing and learn some valuable lessons from Jan’s experience from working for studios to eventually starting his freelance venture. We discuss a variety of topics related to freelancing, from choosing work that truly resonates with you, setting boundaries, working with international cl...

Carly Whitaker is the Head of Culture and Branding at Umuzi - a NPO focussed on providing access to education that leads people to higher level careers. Carly also has a wide foray into lecturing and education including being a PHD candidate as well as a practising fine artist. We talk about a lot of the similarities and differences that exists in the digital and physical design world, take a deep...

In this episode we have an interesting conversation with Alexandre Tilmans, co-founder of the Baz-Art Organisation, who shifted into the art space after working in finance and construction before finding a love for craft beer and the creative challenges involved in it. After working closely with street artists, Alexandre started the International Public Art Festival that has soared over recent yea...

In this episode we have another read through and discussion about a design-related article exploring all the roles within a design organisation and how it fits into the leadership hierarchy. Alfi and Steph give valuable insight into how organisations they’ve worked for in the past structured their teams and leadership roles, compared to where they find themselves today. Find the original article h...

Fishcat Zombie is a freelance filmmaker and founder of Visual Jutsu, a production and animation agency. He shares his experience of how he went from studying to lecturing cinematography before going freelance, and everything he did to prepare himself for that. He also shares some tips on how he builds and maintain client relationships to give them the best possible outcome. Fish also shares a bit...

Loux Roets started his own furniture company over fifteen years ago after growing up with a love for working with wood. From doing all the physical, business, and ground work to eventually focussing on the design and prototyping side of things, his team creates pieces of furniture that walk the boundary between practical functionality and functional art. Louw also shares his origin story of how he...

In this episode we do something a little bit different to fully swing back into the new year - instead of a guest we give commentary and share our thoughts on an article. Anticipating the trends in user design for 2023, Diana Malewicz comments on a range of topics we should be looking out for including motion and typography, and how Alfi and Steph have incorporated some of these design considerati...

Verusha is the Managing Director at Red & Yellow Creative School of Business, who originally started studying in a different field before finding her way into marketing and advertising on accident. Verusha shares her experiences of not necessarily knowing exactly what you want to do or study, and how simply allowing yourself not to be unhappy can lead to better opportunities. Verusha also give...

In our first episode of the year we get to talk to Eli Woolery who is the co-host of the Design Better podcast, a lecturer at Stanford University, and the Director of Design Education at InVision. Eli shares some parallels between practising and teaching design, and what it was like for him to move away from product design and into the realm education and content creation. We also explore the affo...

Kayembe Ilunga is an Associate Director in Experience Consulting at PwC South Africa. He joined us at the UX SA conference for a chat about the companies journey into design and the positive impacts it can have on the world.

Natalia Carvalho is a product designer, and also a guest speaker at the UX South Africa Conference. As a product designer, Natalia moves between UX and UI roles, and thus inspired her talk on working cohesively and integrating departments to better understand and deliver a superior product/service. Natalia also lectures, and talks about the importance of bringing real life experience and examples...

Aalia Coovadia is a Researcher and Designer for Discovery, as well as a guest speaker at the UX South Africa Conference. She gave a talk that continues on from her masters thesis - focussing on service design in the dental care industry and increasing the frequency for patient checkups. Not only focused on the topic itself, Aalia also became interested in the art of research itself, and seeks to b...

Steyn Viljoen is the Lead Product Designer / Security at Luno, and one of the guest speakers at the UX South Africa Conference. In his talk he shares ideas about being an optimist when it comes to problem solving, and the three key points of being an optimist; problems are inevitable and necessary for progress, all problems are soluble within the laws of nature, and we can solve these due to the k...

Alex Oloo, the Head of Design at Absa, was a guest speaker at the UX South Africa Conference. Coincidentally, his brother and our co-host  Alfi sat down with him for a short chat about the contents of his talk on design leadership. Alex shares how he has adapted his style to suit the new norm of business and working from home in the post-covid era, as well as respecting employees as individua...

Schalk Venter is a consultant for Front-end Development South Africa, as well as a guest speaker at the UX South Africa Conference wherein he gave his talk on implementing design systems and how they could go bad. As a frequent speaker on this topic, Schalk often revels in the feedback and discussion that he has with people who have attended his talks, and truly allows his talks to evolve and refi...

Inez is a Design Director at ABSA, and also co-hosted a workshop together with Danielle Goosen at the UX South Africa Conference. Through her work on the accessibility of the ABSA banking app she became interested in designing for people with disabilities and learning how they interact with technology. For her talk at the conference, Inez and her colleague Danielle Goosen invited members of the Bl...

Danielle Goosen is a designer at ABSA, and also co-hosted a workshop together with Inez Patel at the UX South Africa Conference. Danielle first met Inez at a SheCanDo workshop and ABSA graduate programme that involved them working together with developers on accessibility within the ABSA banking app, specifically towards blind people. As we continue on the accessibility discussion we had with Inez...

Chaz Dunn is an entrepreneur, director, and has a passion for everything tech and Web3 related. As a multi-faceted creative, we talk about Chaz’s experience in the film industries around the world, and how they’re able to pull their own audience. Chaz also enjoys playing a role in the music industry for developing artists and shares thoughts on how independent creatives can benefit from advisors/m...

Andrea is a graphic designer and co-founder of Atto, a graphic design studio based in Milan, Italy. With the studio focussing on producing a variety of projects including editorials, motion graphics, web design and illustrations, Andrea shares experiences from being open to taking any projects and clients in the beginning of your studio, and how this plays into time management as an independent cr...